NCJ Number
181911
Journal
Psychology, Public Policy, and Law Volume: 4 Issue: 1/2 Dated: March/June 1998 Pages: 175-199
Date Published
March 1998
Length
25 pages
Annotation
This analysis of laws requiring the use of medication to reduce sex drive as a condition of parole for sex offenders focuses on the moral, ethical, and legal problems these laws raise and concludes that such laws are morally repugnant violations of offenders’ constitutional rights to privacy and of physicians’ ethics.
Abstract
Increasing public intolerance for sex offenses has led to a number of legislative measures, including the requirement of chemical castration. Four legislatures have recently passed laws requiring this use of medication as a condition of parole; 23 other legislatures have considered similar legislation. Requiring offenders to continue to take prescribed medication as a condition of probation, parole, or conditional release from insanity commitments is not new. However, the chemical castration laws are novel in that they require judges to impose treatment for classes of offenders defined solely by the crime committed, most often without any medical evaluations to determine whether the medications are clinically indicated or safe, much less to determine whether they are effective for a particular offender. These laws violate offenders’ constitutional rights to privacy. They also violate physicians’ ethics in that they permit nonphysicians to prescribe medications for medically inappropriate purposes. Therefore, psychiatrists should actively oppose these laws in the courts and legislatures. Footnotes